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Saturday, December 7, 2013

Obstacles

Now
that November is over, we can take a breather if we were pushing for 50,000
words. I fell short, as in about halfway short. But I’ve got a story in the
works.

It
is a volume two to another. I was that close to sending the first to one of the
agents from last summer’s WIFYR when the wonderful Carol Williams offered to
take a final look at it. She found issues and raised questions. As I couldn’t
satisfactorily answer them all, the story stalled.

That
was August.

I’ve
picked at it since, but things wouldn’t resolve themselves. I would bounce
between thoughts of Carol knows what she’s talking about, but she’s just one
voice and we writers are free to ignore critique suggestions, then back to she
really knows children’s literature and what publishers are looking for so maybe
I ought to listen to her. Nonetheless, I couldn’t see what she was talking
about and couldn’t repair it.

Along
came NaNo and I started the second, same characters, same voice. In the middle
of the month, I began reworking volume one to share with my writer’s group and voila;
there was what Carol was talking about. The matured voice, or main character,
or whatever from the second book helped shed light onto the shortcomings in the
first. Spending the month revisiting the character in a different story has
allowed me to critically understand the MC in a new way.

That
is the way writing goes. At times you’re stuck with some major obstacle in
front of you. Later it’s gone and the path is clear.